- UN Declaration on the RTD at 25
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Online learning course
Basic Introduction to the Right to Development
In collaboration with OHCHR, UNITAR has developed this e-platform learning course dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development. The course has four modules (1) Introduction (2) Historical background (3) United Nations mechanisms on the Right to Development and (4) The Right to Development responds to contemporary challenges, each followed by short quizzes. The course is free and available to all interested participants.
Video
Right to Development Anniversary video
Produced for the OHCHR by Dev.TV – a media company which produces news items and documentary features about development issues for broadcast by television companies worldwide
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Posters
UN Declaration on the Right to development (articles); available in six official UN languages
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Quote from the High Commissioner for Human Rights; available in six official UN languages
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Publications
A booklet containing the text of the Declaration on the Right to Development (each article illustrated by a photo); available in six official UN languages
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- A book “The Right to Development” (forthcoming)
In commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development, this UN publication presents for the first time a wide range of in-depth analytical studies by more than 30 international experts covering the context, meaning and application of this right and its potential to shape human rights and development policy and practice. Together they support the concept of an enabling environment for development that would ensure freedom from want and freedom from fear for all people.
Built around the themes of Situating - , Understanding - , Cooperating for - and Implementing - the Right to Development, the contributions to this volume not only clarify the meaning and status of this right but survey the most salient challenges—based on actual development practice—to its transformative potential. These studies give specific attention to the principles underlying this right, namely, active, free and meaningful participation in development; equality, non-discrimination and fair distribution of its benefits; self-determination and full sovereignty over natural wealth and resources; the rule of law and good governance; human rights-based approaches to development; global governance and reform; and social justice and equity, especially with regard to poverty, women and indigenous peoples. Further, these principles are applied to the issues of aid, debt, trade, technology transfer, intellectual property, access to medicines and climate change in the context of international cooperation, solidarity and the global partnership for development. Finally, several chapters review the proposals to monitor progress and enhance institutional support for implementing the Right to Development.
Taken together, the contributions to this publication illustrate the far-reaching potential of the Right to Development and that its relevance stands renewed 25 years since the adoption of the Declaration. They make the case for re-invigorating this right in order to realize its added value to advancing both human rights and development in an unprecedentedly interdependent, increasingly fragile and constantly changing world.
Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, provided the foreword to this publication.